Facing It Analysis

Previous poems and short stories regarding the war era have been similar for the most part. Authors all spoke through a voice different than theirs, used symbolism to represent larger war aspects, and simply soaked their literature with painful descriptions. However, after the war and with the entrance of postmodernism into American literature, authors such as Yusef Komunyakaa, Tim O’Brien, and Kurt Vonnegut were introduced as their literature targeted more personal war positions/experiences. Such particular positions exposed the authors’ viewpoints about the war and how it has affected their lives afterwards. For instance, in “Facing it” Komunyakaa displays the sorrow that the Vietnam War has generated within him even after a decent amount of time. This is clear by the broken up and short lines that his poem is composed of, giving off the impression of how painful it is for the author to even speak of the matter. Komunyakaa begins his poem by painfully stating “I said I wouldn’t/ dammit: No tears” (3-4). …show more content…
In other words, O’Brien believes that there are not any words to explain war stories because they are beyond what the mind if capable of grasping. Furthermore, O’Brien includes the consequences of war as he confesses that “the point doesn’t hit you until twenty years later, in your sleep, and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story to her, except when you get to the end you’ve forgotten the point again” (181). Clearly, the war is traumatizing to a degree where soldiers repress memories unconsciously. The burring of memories continues into “From Slaughterhouse-Five” as Vonnegut could not write about the bombing of Dayton for years due to a fogged memory. This possibly has to do with how quickly things occured during war and the need to focus on staying alive. Finally, Vonnegut considers that there is “nothing intelligent to say about a massacre”